


Still Her Words

by saying_grace



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Attempted Abortion, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, One Shot, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Mad Max: Fury Road, Pre-Mad Max: Fury Road, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 01:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12332538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saying_grace/pseuds/saying_grace
Summary: Back in the Vault, Capable remembers.





	Still Her Words

**Author's Note:**

> (a quick one-shot originally posted to @thedagsdaughter on tumblr for Five Wives Week in 2015, might as well share it on here! x)

When they return to the Vault, her words are still there.

_OUR BABIES WILL NOT BE WARLORDS_ , they say.

_WHO KILLED THE WORLD?_  they say.

_WE ARE NOT THINGS,_  they say.

We are not things.  _Those were her words._

Her words, still there, bleeding on the walls, bright and rebellious, living entities of their own. A cry for revolution. A clenched fist, a shaking breath, an open vein. No more mercy here.  _We’re not going back._

It’s the first breath Capable has truly taken, the first quiet moment that she’s felt settle over her in a day, and it  _hurts_. Worse than gunshots ricocheting off the rig, worse than flames licking her skin, worse, even, than anything Joe ever did to her. Reopening a wound that never even had time to close yet. Ripping out the stitches and rubbing it in the dirt.

There’s too much here, in the silence and the dim. Trauma and nightmares, but also dreams and longing; regrets, lonesomeness, but also hope. And it’s the hope, Capable knows, that hurts the most. Beside her, Cheedo starts to cry, silent tears, whispering sobs, and then Dag is holding her, and Toast steps away, towards the center of the room, unblinking, unwavering.  

Capable doesn’t move, and she doesn’t – she won’t – cry. She was broken in a thousand places on the Fury Road, chewed up and spit out and torn and crushed and bruised, and yet here she is, here she is still standing, here she is still alive, and here she is where Angharad is not, will never be again. No. She won’t break now.

Later, she will wander the vault, trailing her fingers over every stone, calling back the memories like ghosts in her mind. There, the windowsill where they used to read to each other, stories about dragons and shipwrecks and thieves, stories they had heard from their families, long ago, stories they dreamed up themselves. There, the pool where Angharad used to lie for hours, sometimes going under the water for so long Capable would start to wonder in a panic if she would ever come back up. But she always would, emerging from a halo of bubbles and ripples like a creature from another world, gasping for breath, droplets glistening on her skin like gemstones. Holy. There, the piano where she would sing as Miss Giddy played, words in a language Capable didn’t understand but sometimes made Angharad swallow hard and get a far away look in her eyes. There, the dunny can that Capable had found her curled up next to, gaping red lines decorating her forearm and dripping onto the floor. She had dropped to her knees and pressed her hands to the wounds and opened her mouth to shout for Giddy, but then Angharad looked at her with sharp eyes and gripped her shoulders so hard there were bruises the next day and made her swear not to tell. And Capable didn’t, even though it made her stomach knot up whenever she caught a glimpse of the scars, pale and cruel in the fading light. There, Capable’s bed that Angharad would crawl into in the silent hours of the night, curling up next to her, breathless whispers and daring giggles, hands touching in the darkness, the kind of closeness only sisters could have. There, the chair in which Capable would sit on dull mornings as Angharad patiently untangled her mess of fiery hair, long fingers gently working out the knots and snarls. Sometimes she would not be so gentle, sometimes her fingers would be holding too much fury or pain for her to do anything but pull. And sometimes Capable would bite back tears, not just because it hurt, but because there was something hurting her sister more, something they couldn’t speak. There, the staircase Capable had sprinted up the night that everything was colored with blood, the night Furiosa slammed open the door to find Angharad with a mirror in front of her open legs and a curled wire in her grip, the night Angharad had decided she would rather die than carry an Immortan’s son. She was so heavy in Capable’s arms, so weak, so shaken, and yet Capable knew her sister was made of steel, something unbridled and holy, something bigger than them in their veils and their vault.  _We are not things_ , she had said, and for the first time, Capable knew what those words truly meant.

What would she say now if she could see them here, a war boy’s goggles around Capable’s neck, a bag of seeds clutched to Dag’s chest, grease smeared across Toast’s face? If she could have seen the Vuvalini, riding across the dunes like messengers of Hades, powerful and dangerous and everything Angharad might have been? If she could have seen Nux, an old man’s battle fodder, a kid at the end of his half-life, quiet and blazing and witnessed, as he flipped the war rig in the canyon, as he gave his last breaths pure and clean and full of something important, something good? If she could have seen Max, the way he chased them across the sand, the way he held Furiosa in his arms so gently, the way he poured out his blood for her, proof that the world hadn’t fully been killed, that there was still some redemption left? If she could have seen the Milk Mothers, unbound and unafraid, releasing water down to the Wretched, breathing life back into the wasteland? If she could have seen Furiosa, standing with the sisters on the hood of the Gigahorse, radiant, victorious, surrounded by those that loved her? If she could have seen the Citadel come to life in an instant, felt the unparalleled heart-pounding  _joy_  that they all shared in those moments of glory?  _If she could have seen it?_

And maybe she did. Maybe she was looking down from Valhalla and smiling. Maybe there was a part of her that was still with them, even as they ascended to the top of the citadel. Maybe she never really left.

For now, Capable just stands. She just waits. She refuses to break. But one day, she will go down to the barracks and she will hold the war pups in her arms and she will tell them the stories, stories like the ones she and Angharad exchanged what seems like a lifetime ago.

_They called her Splendid. There were scars on her face that she named “little rebellions.” There were tears in her eyes when she sang. And there was fire in her heart, always, fire that soared through her veins, fire that refused not to be felt by any who touched her._

_They called her Splendid. She defied the Immortan with the wind in her hair and a smile on her lips. She sprinted across the sand with a bullet wound in her leg. She gave her life so that others may live._

_They called her Splendid, Angharad, much-loved-one. The patroness of freedom, of maternity, of revolutionaries. The lone figure in the desert cloaked in white, who will come to you, defend you, inspire you, fight for you,  if you but only murmur her name._

_They called her Splendid. They took her liberty, her womb, her personhood, but they could never take her courage. They could not contain her spirit. My children, this is what happens when you put a wild thing in a cage: it takes its torment and its rage, and it turns them into weapons. When you put a wild thing in a cage, it is only a matter of time before it breaks loose._

_They called her Splendid._

_Her words ignited a spark, which became a flame, which became an inferno._

_They called her Splendid._

_Our Lady of the Wasteland, the warrior whose name is Woman._

_They called her Splendid._

_She was not a thing. Do you understand? You cannot own a human being. Listen to me. Listen. She was not a thing. We are not things._

And the stories go on, on and on, generation to generation, life to death, in the barracks, in the Vault, under the tree they planted for Nux. And as her words live on, Angharad does, too. Her memory wanders the halls, shields those who cannot shield themselves, cradles both infants and mothers alike when they cry. She is not forgotten. Capable won’t let it happen.

When they start calling her History Woman, her sister’s words are the first that Capable embeds in her skin.

_WE ARE NOT THINGS._

_(Those were her words.)_


End file.
